


Common Spiders of North America

by DJClawson



Series: Theodore Nelson's Adventures in Sharing a Workspace [27]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Endgame what Endgame, M/M, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not FFH compliant, Obnoxious cat, Why is Marvel burning their whole empire down, thanos - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 05:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20773673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJClawson/pseuds/DJClawson
Summary: Going into space is a bigger deal than some people think it is.





	Common Spiders of North America

**Author's Note:**

> All hail the mighty beta, LachesisMeg. All hail.

Theo had to hand it to Matt - he had a good idea with his distinctive ringtones. Theo didn’t necessarily want his phone shouting people’s names out - a lot of people in his contacts list had last names that were ‘from bar’ or ‘from club’ - but he now bothered to at least change the music for family. And Matt. And in this case, Matt’s burner phone.

Theo grumbled and grabbed the phone from his bed stand, pulling it under the covers with him and Sadie. “Hey.” 

“Hey.” Matt never used names while speaking on a burner. “I was wondering if a friend of ours can come by.”

“You - you gotta be less vague than that.”

“It’s the kid,” Matt said. “He hit his head. Says he’s fine, but I think he should rest somewhere for a little while before trying to get back home, and he’s in your area.”

“My area?”

“Yeah, I’m in, uh,” and there was a pause on the other end, “somewhere right now. Somewhere with a lot of brick buildings. And grass.”

“So, not Manhattan.”

“No,” Matt said, and it really did sound like he did not know where he was. Which was not unknown for Matt. “He called me to ask if he can come by my apartment.”

“I don’t have a key.”

“Right. Shit.” Because they were so rarely at Matt’s place. “Your place?”

“Are you sure he doesn’t need a doctor?”

“I don’t know, actually. But he does need somewhere to go.”

What was he supposed to say to that? “Of course he can come. Give him my address. Tell him to look for the Christmas lights framing the window. They’re multi-colored.”

“Thank you.” 

“I’m not sewing him up. I can’t handle it.”

“You don’t have to sew him up,” Matt said. 

Theo got the first aid kit out. He didn’t even like having a first aid kit around, much less a full tackle box of one that had supplies that occasionally needed restocking. There was a big one in the shop for obvious reasons, but it made him queasy to even think about using it, which thankfully he’d never had to do. 

He looked at his watch. It was two in the morning. “Fuck.” Didn’t teenagers have school? Wasn’t that still a thing? He laid back down on the bed, not intending to drift off but doing so anyway until he heard the knock on his window. 

Yeah. Spider-man. In a working suit, with his eyes lit up all bright, was knocking on his window from his position attached to the side of the building. His name was apt.

“Shit, sorry,” Theo said and opened the window. The kid was even better at climbing in through a small slot than Matt was, and Theo didn’t think that was possible. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I mean - yeah.” Peter - that was his name, right? - removed his mask. Actually no, it just retracted. His suit was shiner and more metallic than Theo remembered it being, but he’d never gotten a really good look. “I just got dizzy and I thought Daredevil might be around - and were you sleeping?”

“He woke me up. Sit down. Don’t worry about.” He put the electric kettle on, just in case. “He’s - wherever he is. Far away. He’s not great at geography. There’s Hell’s Kitchen and then there’s the rest of it.” He poured Peter a glass of water and held it out to him. “So, you’re hurt? I’m not a doctor. Matt sews his own stitches and I can’t even watch it. But I can call one.”

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine,” Peter corrected. “I have accelerated healing.”

“How did you get that?”

“Spider bite.”

“Did the spider who bit you heal faster than normal spiders, or do spiders just heal faster than humans?”

“I - I don’t know the answer to that question. I should know the answer. But I don’t.” Peter talked very fast, like the nervous teenager that he was. “I did google it but I didn’t find anything that was, you know, helpful and oh my G-d you have a cat! I love - “

Sadie responded to Peter’s reaching hand, which was still nowhere near her, by hissing so fiercely she sounded like a snake, then disappeared under the covers. 

“Okay, okay, nice cat. Nice cat,” Peter said. “Cats usually like me.”

“Yeah, but do you usually bother them when they’re asleep in their bed? Imagine if she was a person and you just snuck up on her. A very mean person.” He learned over and lifted the covers just enough to give her a stroke between the ears. “You gotta earn her respect.”

“How do I do that?”

“Nurse her back to health for a month and feed her steak. It doesn’t have to be prime rib, but it should be lean cuts.” He turned back to Peter. “Are you injured?”

“I got hit in the head. And - is it okay if I take my suit off and check?”

“Yeah.” He pointed to the bathroom, hoping Peter was wearing something under that suit. It was a level above Spandex but still pretty close. When Peter closed the door behind him, Theo got the ice packs out of his freezer, just in case. They were the nice ones, too - the kind with straps that sports professionals used on their limbs. “Is everything okay?” he called out. “Are you decent?”

“Yes!”

Theo opened the door to the bathroom. Peter - who was pretty buff for a kid, maybe he lifted at school, or the spider that bit him hit the gym - was wearing boxers and a towel around his waist. There were red splotches that Theo knew to be the beginning of bruises. “I’ll get you something to put on,” he said, and grabbed a spare shirt and pajama bottoms that would probably fit Peter, and tossed them at him before turning around. Maybe the kid ran around the entire city in a suit Theo wouldn’t be caught dead in in high school but he deserved some privacy. 

When he turned back, Peter was dressed and Theo realized he didn’t know how to check for a concussion. Peter had strapped one of the ice packs around his shoulder. 

“You’re gonna be pretty bruised in the morning,” Theo said. 

“Yeah, but it’ll be gone by tomorrow night,” Peter assured him, but it wasn’t very reassuring. He shouldn’t be getting banged up like Matt in the first place.  _ No one _ should be getting banged up like Matt.

Theo gestured to the suit, which was handing from the curtain frame like so much laundry. “That thing doesn’t protect you.”

“It’s good at everything but blunt objects. And it’s pretty good at blunt objects. Before I met Mr. Stark, I had a suit that did nothing. It was just sweats and goggles.”

Okay, now Theo  _ really _ wanted to see the suit. “So you’re like - Iron Man but you got a spider bite?”

“No!” Peter rushed to say. “I mean - no, not really. But kinda. He did make it really high tech. I’m still finding things it can do. But I can fight without the suit.”

“I’m not doubting that you can fight. Matt fights and he doesn’t even have a suit anymore. Because he’s a fucking idiot who’s going to get himself killed.” He pointed to the suit. “Is this a new one? It looks darker.”

“Yeah, I got it after the one I wore in space got a little fried by um, being in space. And on another planet?”

“You were  _ on another planet? _ ”

“Oh, yeah,” Peter said as if it wasn’t nothing, but certainly wasn’t anything incredibly exciting and newsworthy. “Remember that ship that flew over New York? I was on that. It landed on some planet that was really red and we fought Thanos - “

“The purple guy?”

“Yeah, the purple guy. And he totally kicked our asses, and then he went to earth and that weird thing happened with the second Captain America coming out of nowhere and cutting off his head. I wasn’t there for that, but Dr. Strange said it had something to do with timelines? So maybe we’ll see him again. Or maybe not. I can’t tell. I can’t really follow what Dr. Strange says.”

Theo decided this was worth getting a drink. “There’s tea and juice if you want it.” But he was having a beer. “So who’s Dr. Strange?”

“I’m not totally sure? But he says that’s his real name and he does - magic? He does wavy things with portals.” Peter pointed his finger and made it circle around in front of him. 

Theo sat down at the table. “Wait, are the portals sparkly?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“No, I know a guy who does that. He has a school in Nepal where they’ll teach you, but you have to fight the forces of darkness or whatever, so I said, no thanks. They probably know each other. G-d, I know some weird people.” He said to Peter. “Not you. Though let’s admit it, you are not the most normal guy. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.”

Peter nodded. He did take some juice from the fridge. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t Spider-man - like I didn’t have powers, didn’t feel the need to do something with them - because I’d have a lot more time for school. And friends. And I don’t know, video games? But fighting crime is really cool.”

“And you do get to go to space.” Theo drank his beer. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. Then I found out about how you had to be like, super buff. Basically a jock scientist who also could fly planes. So I settled on designing spaceships, but NASA was in a hiring freeze and I ended up designing unrelated shit at Hammer. Apparently, what I should have been doing the whole time was looking for magic spiders.”

“Radioactive. I think. I don’t still have the spider.”

“And you know Tony Stark, which - teenage me is very impressed.” He gestured to his wall of trophies, photos, and other miscellany, including the badges and poster from the Stark Expo.

“You went to a Stark Expo? I went to a Stark Expo!” Peter was proud of discovering this fact.

“Is that how you met him?”

“More like he walked past me. You?”

“He wasn’t the face of the company yet. His parents had just died, so Obadiah Stane did the speech. And he brought out the first drone prototypes and had them drop little Stark-brand lego sets of the drones into our hands. It was awesome. Looking back, I don’t know how my parents paid for it, but man, did it make my whole childhood.” What he did know was that several years later, when Tony made his big appearance in the media as the new face of the company and he was going through puberty, Tony became Theo’s first celebrity crush. But that died when he couldn’t get a job at Stark Industries and watched enough interviews to realize the guy was definitely a dick and therefore not his type. 

“You know, I don’t see Mr. Stark that often, but I know Happy pretty well, and if you wanted to get hired - I could maybe put in a good word? I mean, no promises. None. I - probably can’t do what I just said I could do.”

“Why is it that the moment I finally claim majority ownership in the family shop, the tech job offers come rolling in?” Theo said, making it clear that he was amused. “You’re too late. Rand Corp already offered me a job I’m underqualified for. But I appreciate the offer.”

“I just - “

“Look, Peter, some people, when they’re kids - okay, not kids, young adults - have a very set idea of what they want to do in life. Everything seems so important in the moment and you’re more sure than you’ve ever been about anything. You think you’ve got it all planned out. And for some people, it takes them their whole lives to figure out that that’s not true. For me, it was four months working in an cubicle in an office that probably doesn’t even  _ have _ cubicle walls anymore for employees to have some privacy because that would be considered a luxury that you would have to earn. My work isn’t sophisticated and it isn’t going to change the world, but I like it. All this tech shit is really cool to look at from afar and read about and maybe see when aliens invade earth and Stark shows up in his latest suit, but day to day life - that’s real life. That’s what matters.” He finished his beer. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to lecture you.”

“That’s okay,” Peter said. “You’re probably right. It’s just hard to focus on regular stuff, like school, when I feel like I need to be helping people.”

“Hey, at your age I wasn’t focusing much on school,” Theo admitted. “I was working the register at the shop and figuring out how to do as little schoolwork as possible and still get good grades so I could have more time to get high. If weed had been as strong as it is now, I probably would have been a zombie. No one likes focusing on school in high school. For some people it’s drinking or drugs or parties or sports or whatever. Anything but school. For you it’s ... fighting crime, I guess. I should probably tell you not to put yourself in danger, but you’re not going to listen to me, so I’m not going to patronize you.”

Peter nodded. “Thanks. And - I mean that. I guess you have experience in that.”

“Actually, Foggy does most of it. I kinda let Matt off the hook most of the time. Unless he’s really injured, or he’s lying about how much he’s injured, or he says he’s fine and then he passes out cold on my bed. And even then - “ Theo shrugged. “He doesn’t need shit from me that he gets from everyone else.”

“So which of you is the guy in the chair?”

“What?”

“The guy who sits at the computer and tells you stuff to do over the headset. Like in movies.”

“I don’t think that happens in real life.”

“I have one.”

“Oh.” Theo considered it. “Matt’s never asked for help. He definitely needs it, but I think he would be offended if I offered.” He watched as Matt finally crawled - of course - through the window. “Do you need a chair guy?”

“No,” Matt said, it probably not mattering too much if he’d heard the rest of their conversation or not on his way over. “It turns out I was in Bedstuy.”

“Oh. Not so bad,” Peter said, and to Theo’s expression, added, “He’s been more lost than that.”

“He hasn’t admitted to it.”

Matt ignored both of them and went to the bathroom to remove his mask and wash up. 

“You didn’t ask Peter if he was okay!” Theo shouted. Not too loud, because of the hour. Also, it was late and he had a beer in him.

“You know how to take care of people,” Matt said from the sink. 

“I should go,” Peter said. “I think my class knows I’m Spider-man but I probably shouldn’t confirm it by being late every single day.”

“You don’t smoke weed,” Theo said. “Just make sure your clothes smell like it. You won’t get any questions.”

“I’ll be back to return your stuff. Thank you!” He shouted to the bathroom. “Thanks Matt!”

Matt mumbled something and Peter left the way he came, considerably more nimble this time around. Theo was too tired to wait on Matt to shower, and climbed back into bed. “I want to go to space,” he mumbled when Matt finally joined him.

“I think that might be out of my price range.”

“Tell me you’ve never been to space.”

“I’ve never been to space.” Matt had to add, “I don’t think.”

“Peter’s been to space. He’s so much cooler than I was when I was a kid. He knows aliens.”

“You met an alien.”

“But I didn’t get his number!” Theo groaned. 

“And whose fault is that?” Matt kissed him. “I’m sure you were a very cool kid. Even if you didn’t fight crime in space.”

“Maybe it’s because I went to a public school with normal spiders in our lockers.”

Matt smiled. He, too, looked exhausted. Maybe he did need a guy in a chair. “Thank you for taking care of Peter. I just think - he needs people watching over him. Maybe people who are not Tony Stark.”

“My mom would be pretty happy to be a grandmother.”

“He has an aunt.”

“Like that’s going to stop her.” Theo rolled over. “It’s late. Can we talk about adopting teenaged vigilantes in the morning?”

“Whatever you want,” Matt said, and Theo went back to sleep.

The End


End file.
